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Rookie learning through DIY, prototyping alternator

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SimonMester:
Hello!

I have looked around these forums, and if something like this has been answered before, apologies.
I learned a bit from just searching around here, but I think people are doing a bit more advanced designs/ directly useful turbines.
I am simply learning about electronics by building from scratch. Or at least as close to it as possible. I have been trying to build a generator, and after a small prototype one (with 2 coils on sides) I decided to build a more proper prototype. I have 100mm long NdFeB magnets on a 80mm diameter rotor, and 12 stator coils around.
I have been, dissappointingly unable to get any decent current or voltage going from the setup. I know this must be due to not really knowing how to wire the 12 coils together.
I tried getting some information on that, but its either wired into rectifiers, or talking about 3 phase generators.
Logically speaking, my original idea was to just wire the ends into the starts of the next coil, essentially creating one big coil.
I tried many setups but nothing seems to get any real power going.
Even more strangely, the faster I spun the rotor, the less power I got out of it. If I just jerked the rotor back and forth, rocking it back and forth a fraction of a full rotation, I got multiple times as much power.

I just learned about parasitic capacitance, and wonder if that might be the entire reason? Or is it the wiring? I use notably thicker wire (0.85 mm) than in my first small prototype (0.2 mm). I knew this would influence the voltage/current, but not much more than that.

I don't use iron cores, most elements are tough 3D printed resin I designed in CAD.
The coils are hand wound, and thus not exactly even, despite using the 3D printed uniform backings to wind the wire around.

Bonus question: is lightly scratching the enamel coating on the coils of any significant effect? I had to remove them from their original scaffolds, so some of them got tiny scrapes here and there.

Any pointers are welcome!
Thank you!

Bruce S:
Welcome to the forum, pull up a chair a sit a spell.

There are many more people here that will help you along this journey (aka addiction ) that are knowledgeable than I.
Having said that, maybe a good start would be to disconnect all the coils from each other (if possible) and start with getting readings from each of the coils to see how each one stands.
There is also a FAQ section that very knowledgeable people have contributed to if you are so inclined to do a bit more reading.

Cheers
Bruce S

electrondady1:
what are the 3 dimensions of your magnets and how many do you have?

SimonMester:
They are not large magnets, 100mm long, 10mm wide and deep. 8 of them on the rotor.
They are N52 neodymium.
My problem isn't the 'absolute' output of it, but I played around with the bar magnets before I put the coils together, and the comparatively the overall structure is not much better than when I was just doing that with a single coil or 2. Same goes for the first prototype which only had 2 coils and 4 small ferrite magnets, it actually functioned better.
So I'm fairly certain I'm doing something wrong in terms of having the coils too close or wiring them wrong.

SimonMester:
Attached some pictures. The coil on the original backing, I have been removing them so I can play around with them more easily.
You can also see the embedded magnets.

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